"The only thing worth saying is ineffable."

Max McBride

Who Is Max?

Max is a novelist, poet, playwright, and a full-time practicing lawyer. He writes. He reads. He works. The bulk of his time is spent at the office. He will never read all the books by his bed or watch all the shows saved on his DVR. Max enjoys art, design, college basketball, ballet, modern dance and sacred music. J.S. Bach, Shakespeare, Rumi, Bob Dylan, Joseph Campbell, Secretariat (yes, the Horse) and Yeats are just a few of the greats that have had an impact on him. Max also is also a social commentator of sorts, and his occasional observations about the culture, travel, and, when he can’t hold it in any longer, politics. As he ages, it becomes increasingly obvious that Disgust will be the most likely cause of his death. How sad it is that Beckett may be right and there is nothing more to say. Yet we hope for something better. Max does too. Still.

Max's Latest Books

Mink Eyes

October 1986–the tarnished heart of the “Greed Is Good” Decade. Private detective Peter O’Keefe, physically scarred and emotionally battered Viet Nam vet, is hired by his childhood best friend, ace attorney Mike Harrigan, to investigate what appears on the surface to be merely a rinky-dink mink farm Ponzi scam. But, instead, O’Keefe finds himself snared in a vicious web—of money laundering, cocaine smuggling, and murder—woven by the mysterious mobster known as “Mr. Canada”. Also caught in Mr. Canada’s web is the exquisite Tag Parker, who might be the girl of O’Keefe’s dreams—or his nightmares. This is serious fiction wrapped in the cloak of a hard hitting, exciting detective novel—a story that has it all—terror, murder, addiction, sex, obsession, crime, and doom, yes—but also friendship, fatherhood, integrity, duty, self-sacrifice, and love. Max McBride is a veteran practicing lawyer who gives us an insider’s real-world view of the formal and informal workings of our legal system and the schemes and scams germinating in the seamy underbelly of our business world.

Tenebrae

“Mink Eyes” introduces us to Max McBride the novelist. “Tenebrae” shows us another side of Max – the poet. The lead poem in this collection, “Tenebrae: A Memoir of Love and Death,” is a lovely bracelet of verse and prose poems that link brilliantly together in a gripping narrative and wrenching emotional journey through the illness and death of his wife. Other poems in the book – including several snapshot portraits of Max’s extended family under the title “The Irish in America” – reflect this same grappling with the fundamental issues of our lives – loss, change, growth, hope, despair and acceptance, reflecting throughout a compassionate embrace of the human condition. These are truly poems for the people – plain but exquisitely crafted, direct as a dagger, and expressed in a language that is both elegant and easy to understand at the same time. They reach from the heart to the heart.

Works in Progress

By the time Ralph came out to go to work, Jack had cleared a path on the porch and raked over the front steps and started on the front walkway. It was another of his piss poor jobs. Ralph surveyed it with disdain. The path Jack had carved was much narrower than the sidewalk itself, and he had not scraped all the way down to the concrete, leaving a rough and slippery mat of snow and ice. “Gimme that,” Ralph said, grabbed the shovel and began to blaze a trail down the sidewalk to his car, which was parked on... Continue Reading →